Hang With Friends

Information

Come on in, pull up a chair!

Picture yourself spending some time with congenial friends, sharing your lives and pictures from your cell phones." They're curious about that cool game, song, movie, camping trip, art show, or other event that fascinated you. You talk about all kinds of stuff, poetry, styles, personal achievements, relationships, and bad days. You can share your inner child, and laugh together. They sympathetically listen to your feelings about serious topics like politics or climate change, even when they don't agree.

Personal validation comes from paying attention to one another, giving more than you get. Everyone respects you and themselves, despite our amazing range of personal tastes and interests. They'll tell you they don't agree with an idea or behavior without implying you're a bad person or somehow deficient. It's an "I'm OK, You're OK" kind of fellowship, where nobody tries to make himself look better by picking on somebody else.

Nobody here is into mind games. A discussion started with a loaded guilt-throwing question will be deleted.

This group is not intended to compete with other groups on topics they cover but to "fill in the cracks." Whenever a discussion dwells at length on a topic for which there's an existing group, we urge you to provide members a link to that group to continue along their tangent.

A comment is a shout-out, which will get lost in a few days, because the comment wall is just a random stack.

Please start a discussion to share stories, photos, and videos. Replies will pop up in your "latest activity" and a conversation can develop from the feelings and thoughts you contributed. Groups are built on discussions.

Discussion Forum

I like the sound of Steven Weinberg's voice. He has a calming impact on me as I rush to get my home of 41 years ready to sell and plan and put into motion the new garden at my daughter's home. My home is full o empty boxed quickly filling with the…Continue

Think Goodwill Industries does well by the poor? Fact is, they do WAY BETTER for themselves, to the point where America's Best Christian, Betty Bowers, thinks they're ripping off the christian playbook a bit too well! Have a look for yourself:…Continue

TheraminTrees has recently begun producing a new series of YouTube videos, which added to a wonderful library of earlier observations regarding his experience of religion. Good as all those pieces are, I personally think they pale against this…Continue

Well, considering all the RFRA bills popping up all over the United States, plus all the fun and games ISIS is bringing to the good folks in Syria and Iraq, Betty Bowers, the epitome of well-dressed christianity, has decided to clarify the true…Continue

Thanks for the picture, Napoleon! I hope the other dog survived, it seems a dangerous situation. I've lived with cats for over 40 years and I know how they read my moods and react to it, and I know their feelings are as strong or even stronger than ours. Recently I read Frans de Waal's The Bonobo and the Atheist, and it warmed my feelings towards our closest relatives.

Napoleon, thanks for posting the dog pix. I've heard of non-human doing things like this but have never seen pix like these. My wife and I owned and trained two German Shepherds and they showed us they had more capabilities than I'd ever expected.

Thanks too for the evolution of god pic. Though there is no widely-accepted icon for power, the dollar sign represents part of the motivation well.

Joan Denoo, what I was thinking in terms of sport is that when people who otherwise would be in conflict learn to work together to an end, differences take second place. When a team is selected of the basis of ability not background a change in atittude is the result. Personally I think that sport is THE place for competition. In other fields cooperation should be the dominant factor but there should be room in human life for competing. By the way, there was a joke going around in Britain after the Olympics: a red-head, a mixed-race and a Somalian refugee walked into a pub. Everyone wanted to buy them drinks. It was a rather pointed tribute to the athletes who competed in British colours and a criticism of the usual stereotype, racist "jokes".

Ian Mason, you led me on a most interesting search for West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. I made up a playlist, and am working on another on this exceptional group. This is exactly what I meant when I described my desire. There is an old saying that change won't occur until the last coffin of the last generation is covered with dirt. Well, here is a new generation coming on, and I hope we can find a way to convince them warring is not the answer to anything and here is one alternative. West-Eastern Divan Orchestra certainly makes a start. Here is the first playlist:

Conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim (who made headlines performing Wagner in Israel) and the late Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said, co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra as “a human laboratory" to reveal to the whole world how to participate with each other.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble of musicians between the ages of 15 and 36, established in 1999, is made up of young musicians from countries engaged in war. The orchestra includes musicians from Israel, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran and Spain.

The word “Divan” comes from a collection of Persian, Arabic, and a suite of poems about the Middle East by Goethe. It also is the name for a couch. It refers to the privy council of the Ottoman Empire,

Barenboim and Said brought young Middle Eastern artists together who might not, outside of their music-making, feel comfortable sitting together.

The work can be seen as a symbol for stimulating exchange and mixture between Orient and Occident. The word "west-eastern" does not only refer to German-Middle-eastern, but also Latin-Persian and Christian-Muslim. It mirrors the attempt to bring together Orient and Occident.